TechnoMag Staff
Zimbabwe will next month host the largest ICT gathering on the continent, the 13th Innovation Africa Digital Summit (IAD) in Victoria Falls.

The event, which is being organised by the Ministry of Information Communication Technology, Postal and Courier Services, will run from April 14 to 16.

The IAD Summit attracts up to 500 participants from across Africa and the rest of the world. These include policy makers, regulators, service providers and major end users from the public and private sectors, introducing them to infrastructure providers, value added service providers, consultants, investors and other key stakeholders.

The annual summit will run under the theme, “Affordable Access”, which is very relevant to what is happening in the country following the reduction in broadband and voice tariffs.

The IAD Summit supports the sustainable growth of Africa’s telecomm and ICT sectors and provides a valuable opportunity for the host government to demonstrate a commitment within the country to support the growth of the ICT sector and attract inward investment.

The purpose of the IAD Summit is to provide essential support services to policy makers, regulators, service providers, major end users and solution providers to the African telecomm and ICT ecosystem and achieve industry development, business development, leadership development and trade facilitation across the sector.

Previous hosts, Gambia and Ethiopia, found tangible benefits in respect to governments’ key objectives, among which for Gambia was the enormous exposure of the local ICT community to international best practices and solution providers resulting in the licensing of LTE to a local ISP service provider.

Wireless connectivity and network optimisation equipment was donated free of charge to connect the State University Campus in that country.

The National Investment Agency revealed their National objectives to the International Investor Community and attracted unprecedented levels of interest.

Bi-lateral co-operative agreements were signed between the governments of Gambia, Uganda, Sudan and South Sudan.

For Ethiopia, their objective of attracting large international technology providers resulted in Oracle, SES, IBM, Samsung, SAP and others setting up regional headquarters in Ethiopia’s newly built ICT Park on the outskirts of Addis.

The summit also encouraged MTN and Vodacom to set up local offices, and to engage actively in ICT initiatives in the country despite the fact that no licenses are yet available for them to be fully operational.

Since the last two annual IAD Summits in Ethiopia, ZTE and Huawei have made major investments in that country with up to $1,6 billion being invested in ICT infrastructure.

The IAD Summit host government is positioned as “Summit Partner” along with Extensia and has the opportunity to invite up to 100 local participants from government departments and agencies, providing a huge learning opportunity for the local people to develop a shared vision and access to leading international solution providers and partners.

The host government also has special status on the conference programme with keynote speaking positions at the opening and closing sessions of the summit and throughout the programme.

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